13th TOPOS Conference

Humanity as InnovationTaking the humanity-based view:
Re-Evaluating the Human in Inhuman Japan

Many Japanese companies today have long been trending away from the human aspect of their activities, even outright ignoring or neglecting it. Recently, the CEO of a global company said of Japanese companies that “Somehow when we weren’t paying attention, management that considers people was replaced by management that values only profit and efficiency.”

In the first session, McGill University professor Henry Mintzberg, an advocate of human-centered management, was invited, and will join Kobe University professor emeritus Tadao Kagono and Topos co-founder Ikujiro Nonaka to discuss the concepts of communityship, the plural sector, and empathy as they apply to management styles that elevate humanity, and the universal principles of management.

In debates about AI and robots, the reduction of personnel cost and the improvement of labor productivity due to automation have been emphasized up to this point, but the newly-felt impact of the co-evolution between AI and human, and robot and human, has been underexplored. Technology researchers who think about human-centered social design, a biologist who studies immunity, and an engineer who designs high-performance prosthetics for Japan’s top athletes, will speak together on these topics in the second session.

In the third session, a forum will be opened with business practitioners such as a hospital manager and an executive in charge of diversity at a global company, to discuss human-centered, humanity-focused practical knowledge. Topics such as multidimensional open collaboration starting from human respect, and social enterprise that can balance the human and economics, will emerge.

As outlined above, the 13th Topos Conference will be a place to consider the prospects of management and business, community and society, while taking a humanity-based view.

Application

The 13th Topos Conference has ended. Our thanks to all the attendees and participants.